Senior Data Scientist

Company Overview:

Beam (formerly Edquity) is an anti-poverty technology company that helps institutions and governments administer various cash assistance and benefits programs quickly, equitably, and effectively. Beam simplifies program administration so that everyone — case managers, funders, and applicants — can thrive. Beam works with over 40 postsecondary institutions and multiple local governments and has administered over $200M in funding since 2020.

Beam is a Series A stage, venture-backed company and has received support from many of the leading impact and postsecondary success investors, and has also received non-dilutive support from foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Job Overview:

Beam is seeking an experienced Senior Data Scientist who is passionate about enhancing financial stability and social mobility for Americans through innovative technologies and methods.

The data team at Beam is small but mighty. We are seeking our first data scientist to lead our efforts to add value to the cash assistance space. The ideal candidate for this role has experience working on end-to-end machine learning products for prediction and ranking, with a focus on understanding and/or preventing inequitable model outcomes – we work with peoples’ livelihoods, and we do not take that lightly. They should be comfortable working with difficult problems and putting our users first. At Beam, we value stewardship and solutioning, so this candidate should have a strong sense of ownership and independence. Well-rounded data science knowledge (e.g. exposure to some of: data/analytics engineering, experiments, surveys, research methods, governance, etc.) is a major plus, as our team’s purview is primed to expand with the business.

Our data and analytics infrastructure is built on cloud technologies. Prior experience with AWS and GCP technologies for production data science will come in handy. We are building our data viz out in Glean and we work with Heap for product analytics. Familiarity with similar tools is also preferred.

What you will do:

• Serve as an advocate for data science best practices with our analytics team, internal, and within the social safety net community
• Design, develop, and deploy predictive and ranking models for research, partnerships, advocacy, and product use-cases
• Develop a deep understanding of the social safety net problem space and have compassionate opinions on how best to serve our partners and program applicants
• Perform rigorous analysis to understand and correct biases in production models
• Think critically about the needs of beneficiaries and partner organizations and leverage that understanding to build our data science capabilities responsibly
• Create well-written technical documentation
• Analyze program data to develop recommendations for social safety net practitioners on how to use our platform

Ability, Experience, and Skills

• Technical Skills - Strong SQL, Python and/or R skills are expected. Experience with cloud data environments, such as AWS or GCP will come in handy. A good candidate will also have experience doing their own feature engineering and working with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow. Scikit-learn is sufficient if the candidate is otherwise a holistic fit.
• Data Science and Statistics - A background in machine learning and statistics is expected for this role. A/B testing and statistical analyses are a plus. A good candidate will have significant expertise in machine learning and statistics, but is also willing to quickly learn about new methods or approaches.
• Stewardship - A strong desire to produce responsibly crafted work is a must. A good candidate considers input/output analysis a standard step in creating and maintaining a model. They are comfortable communicating best-practices to non-technical stakeholders, as well as supporting the development of customer-facing language to describe your work. They have developed or worked with data governance frameworks before. They have experience working on a well-documented production model at some point, even if for internal stakeholders.
• Subject Matter - Experience working in government technology, social impact, or at a progressive organization is preferred, but not required. A good candidate will be excited about our work, either through personal experience, professional experience, or a passion for helping others. Regardless of the connection, they are willing to develop a deep understanding of our problem space and leverage that knowledge in their work.

We recognize that the right candidate may not match 100% of the job qualifications listed above. Importantly, we want you to grow with the company, so we are open to a candidate who can do the core work and is willing to grow some competencies. Therefore, we encourage you to apply if you can demonstrate many, but not all of these skills and competencies and are willing and excited to grow!

Compensation and Benefits:

The salary range for this position has been benchmarked in relation to the scope of the role, market rate, company stage, and internal equity. The base salary for this role will be between $140,000-$170,000 Where a candidate falls within the band is determined by skillset, experience level, and geographic location. Furthermore, this role will come with a total compensation package that includes equity shares and competitive benefits. Some of our benefits include

• Fully Paid Health Insurance (Medical/Vision/Dental)
• Unlimited PTO
• 11 Paid Company Holidays
• Generous Parental Leave Benefits
• 401k matching
• Professional Development Stipend
• Potential for Equity
• Many others!

Beam (formerly Edquity) provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.